Tuesday

Sep 22, 2009 at 3:57 PM

If you let John Valdes & Associates build your house using Quick Walls from Manning Building Supplies, and a category III hurricane hits our area, he is so confident of his house’s ability to withstand the storm that he offers to stay in the home with you until the storm passes.

"I have no problem standing behind this (construction process) and staying in the house when it is a category III hurricane, if they want me there with them," said John Valdes, owner of John Valdes & Associates, Inc. "That is how I feel about it."

Six weeks ago, Valdes began construction on the first home in St. Augustine to be built with the Manning Quick Wall system. The three-story home is being built in Pelican Reef and in addition to the strength given to the home by the solid concrete exterior walls, the Quick Wall system has substantially cut construction time and costs.

"Six weeks down the road, we’ve got the house sitting over there with all the framing done, the roof on and we are putting in electrical, plumbing and air conditioning now," said Valdes. "It just really speeds the process up, dramatically. Using conventional building techniques, we would probably be 12 weeks into the job at this point."

Alan Chappell, representing Manning Building Supplies, Inc., explained the company developed the Quick Wall system about 12 years ago. In their Lakeland plant, concrete wall panels are manufactured in a factory-like setting using steel forms.

"We are manufacturing the panels on a steel bed. The panels won’t move and they won’t bow or anything like that," Chappell explained. "We can make as many pieces that are necessary, put them on a truck and they are still going to be perfect.

"Every line is true, every angle is 90 degrees or whatever we want it to be so it is perfect every time. And, there are more advantages of manufacturing in a controlled environment. We are mixing our concrete and actually control it in a lab, controlling moisture content and really being able to produce a perfect panel."

A similar type of building system is called tilt-wall construction. In this process, entire walls are built on-site and raised into place when complete. The Manning Quick Wall system is an improvement on that process, eliminating some of the constraints.

"Tilt-wall construction has been around forever," said Valdes. "The panels are fabricated on-site and are used a lot on commercial buildings. Tilt-wall was never that popular in residential construction because it requires a lot of land.

"Usually, when you are building a house, you don’t have a bunch of spare land that allows you to use forms to build the walls and put them up because limited space of the building site.

"But Manning Building Supplies said fine. They created a plant and will build these concrete wall sections in steel forms, which means they are very precise and very strong 6,000 PSI concrete. They have all the advantages of heavy, tilt-wall construction and eliminate some of the constraints."

Valdes explained that all of this is very significant. The panels arrive on-site on flatbeds. A crane is used to set these panels up that have pre-engineered, pre-sized to fit the configuration of the house, on the foundation that has been provided for it.

"In the case of this house, which is 3,800 square feet, it went up in 16 hours," Valdes explained. "That is what it took to go from a slab to having this humongous building sitting there. That was 16 hours for a four-man crew, a crane operator and a truck driver. So it was a total of six people that only worked for 16 hours to put up the exterior of this house. The owner will realize a savings of $14,000 in this home when it is completed."

Valdes is well known in the area for building homes that exceed building codes and are designed to last. Valdes likes to say that his company builds "for the next 100 years."

"What we have been striving to do all these years is to build the best house you can possibly build and still be able to have people afford it. Between the Quick Wall system and the other processes we use in building a home, we can now give our clients a beautiful home that has a super high level of survivability."

In addition to the solid concrete Quick Wall system, Valdes treats the wood before closing up the building up with Timbor that not only stops termite infestation, it stops roaches, spiders, ants and other pests. The homes are also treated to help prevent mold and mildew.

The attic is completely sealed with Icynene, which is a closed-cell foam insulation. This procedure not only makes the home more energy efficient, it also adds to the strength of the structure.

"If you built a house like most houses are built, do you know what you have got between you and the pressures created by a 120 mph wind?" asks Valdes. "You have a half-inch of dry wall – your ceiling.

"You’ve got an attic that is open to all the pressures being created by this wind blowing past the roof system. Even if the roof system survives, because of the venting that opens to the outside, the only thing between you and your belongings if you are in that house is the drywall in your ceiling. That’s nuts.

"It may even survive. It may stay. But the problem is that it is going to strip the shingles off, it is going to strip those vents off, water is going to pour in and all that pressure being created in there has that insulation blowing around in there like a tornado. You’ve got a half-inch between you and that maelstrom up there."

According to Valdes, the answer to this challenge is Icynene. This foam is sprayed in your attic and seals it. The attic becomes conditioned and the ducts that move air to cool your home do not have to fight temperatures of 140 degrees found in a traditional attic. This greatly adds to the energy efficiency of the home.

"Our attics are not ventilated; they are conditioned," said Valdes. "They are actually part of the house. Our AC ducts are in a conditioned space. There are no soffit vents, no ridge vents, no off-ridge vents.

"So, the roof system now becomes part of the house’s exterior envelope. It doesn’t have the pressures because this house is not subjected to them. It creates a much stronger roof and wall system. And, the reality is that your roof can leak, you can punch a hole in the deck up there, and the water is still not going to come through because the Icynene seals it."

The home currently under construction by Valdes is the first house he has built with Quick Wall. It is the first house that has been built in St. Augustine using Quick Wall and it is also the first three-story house that Manning has ever built using Quick Wall in Florida.

Valdes is not a person that believes in using materials and procedures that are unproven, but just because this is a first for this area, he is confident that the process that has been around for over 50 years has finally come to a point where it is beneficial in his building process.

"I am excited that we are building houses that will be energy efficient and I am excited about the fact that we are going to be building a house that when it is said and done, it will be like living inside a bunker, but it will be beautiful.

"It will be up to the standards that we always put into our buildings and the thing that really makes it interesting is when you are talking about high-end custom homes, we can be very competitive nose to nose on price plus the time savings means that people are paying less interest on their construction loans.

"We just get the project done quicker, which there is a savings there as well. A faster project is a less expensive project. Unfortunately, fast usually means you are losing quality. But, in this case, you don’t. You actually gain quality."

For additional information about John Valdes & Associates or the Manning Quick Wall system, contact Valdes at 824-6150.

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